


Such a Fool (For You)

by BeautifulAllusion



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:01:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25278154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulAllusion/pseuds/BeautifulAllusion
Summary: They’re a mess, jointly and individually, but it’s never mattered before and it doesn’t matter to Danny now.Or a story about how Danny waits and broods, and Steve eventually realises what he was looking for. Coda of sorts for 10.22.
Relationships: Junior Reigns/Tani Rey, Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 14
Kudos: 160





	Such a Fool (For You)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song Not In That Way by Sam Smith.

Danny sighs at the reflection of himself he catches in one of Steve’s old navy paintings as he folds his laundry in the living room. It’s the first time he’s really looked at himself since he shaved his face in the mirror yesterday morning - the first time he’s actually shaved his face properly clean in a long time - and he looks old.

He looks older than he remembers looking a week ago. Older again than he remembers looking a month ago. Much older, he thinks to himself, than he remembers looking 10 years ago when he came to this island and everything started.

Back then he and Steve had both been so young it seems, even though they were actually past thirty and very well experienced in their own fields. He remembers feeling old then, standing in that garage with his gun drawn, the garage that is right through the door he can see down the hall in the house he’s currently living in. This house that seems full of ghosts and so inexplicably empty at the same time. And how did this become his life again?

 _Oh yeah_ , he thought idly, _I met a jerk and said jerk conscripted me into not only his governor sanctioned mini army, but also into his royally screwed up personal life._

Said jerk was going to have a lot to answer for when he came back.

_If he comes back._

Danny shook his head and then shook out the next shirt from the pile for good measure and tried to refocus his attention elsewhere. God, they were so naive to think they were old back then. But youth is naive, and it’s also reckless and damaging. At least in his and Steve’s experience anyway.

 _Yup, definitely getting old_ , he chided himself mentally, putting the shirt on top of the pile of clean and folded. _And also cynical and crotchety apparently._

“Uh, I’m done with everything upstairs I think,” Juniors voice carried as he thunked down the stairs, “are you all set if I head out?”

 _Definitely crotchety_ , Danny thinks as he attempts a halfhearted smirk, “I’m all occupied for the night, thank you. Send my regards to Tani.”

Junior blushes and ducks his head like he does almost every time they have this same exchange, and mock salutes Danny as he heads for the door. He grabs his keys from the sideboard, toes off his boots in favor of some slippahs, and spins the keys around his finger at the door.

“Sir, if you want any updates or even just want to...”

Danny waves a hand to cut him off and put his makeshift babysitter out of his misery, “maybe the team can have a cookout or something in a couple of weeks, but you guys don’t need an old man slowing you down and playing third wheel, and I’d much rather not subject myself to it either. Thanks, but no thanks.”

Junior nods, looks like he’s going to make a protest, but clearly thinks better of it and slips out the door with a final goodnight. Danny sighs with barely restrained relief.

It’s not that he wants to be alone exactly, far from it. But sometimes when the one person you really want to see is the only one that is unavailable, the best company is just yourself and your unavoidably morose feelings.

_Goddamn, I am so old and crotchety._

Abandoning the laundry basket he turns instead for the kitchen. In the first week he had been at home here with Steve and Junior since the incident with Daiyu Mei, his two SEALs had moved all of his most used items to bench top height so he didn’t have to strain to get to anything. Slowly but surely as the weeks ticked on since Steve had left, Danny had been putting them back to their rightful places one by one.

Like some sort of sad kitchen calendar, pot by pot and pan by pan had let him know that Steve had currently been away for 19 weeks. Longingly he glanced at the real calendar. Today was Saturday, and Saturday meant time to move another item back to its proper place.

Danny breathed through his nose as he reached up into the top cupboard to stow the frying pan (his favourite pancake making frying pan) away with its cousins. The skin pulled around his wound, long since having healed over now, and slowly he breathed out through his mouth has he brought his hand back down.

If this place hadn’t been made for giants then it probably wouldn’t have taken him this damn long to get back on track with the day to day of living in it. Then again he had to admit to at least himself, after Steve had left his heart really hadn’t been in the whole road to recovery and physio process.

N _ope, we aren’t going along that train of thought_ , he turned stiffly from the counter and headed for the fridge. He knew he’d stashed some longboards in there the other week and was sure Junior was in the habit of replacing anything he took. _Crotchety old men don’t also need to be complete sad cases._

He flipped on the TV, turned up the volume to spite Steve and his stupid television rules and settled in for the game. Repeat or not he’d missed quite a few in the past few months and at this point anything would interest him more than walking around this place and it’s ghosts only to realise he was actually alone.

• • •

Danny woke up with a mild start to the clicking of the door lock and informercials playing cheerfully on the TV. At last check Steve’s team had been down 20 points at half time. He must have been asleep for a while.

Scrubbing a tired hand over his eyes he turned the volume down. If it was late (or early) enough for Junior to be heading in the door it was definitely time for Danny himself to be heading up to bed.

The door lock clicked, the familiar rattle and turn of the handle settled, and Danny reached for his empty beer bottle as he heard keys jingle and come to rest quietly on the sideboard.

“What did you do, huh?” he smirked a little as he hauled himself up off the couch and reached to turn off the TV, “Tani kick your ass out for disrespecting her cooking again or something?”

The lack of response was deafening and Danny sighed internally. Despite feeling old and disagreeable he didn’t miss that naivety and recklessness of youth. Such small things could seem so large, so important. If only they knew what they’d be worrying about ten years later.

“Look buddy, whatever it was that happened I’m sure you two will...” his voice trailed off as he turned around. Junior didn’t look like he needed this speech.

The expression on his face wasn’t the look of unsure upset and devotion he was expecting to see. It wasn’t his expression at all. More accurately, it wasn’t _Junior_ at all.

“Hey Danny,” all six foot something of unshaved and unfazed former navy seal stood right behind the couch beside the sideboard holding Danny’s gaze.

“Hey,” his voice was soft, quiet. He wasn’t sure quite what was happening here. Wasn’t sure quite what he was seeing, if it was real or just a dream he was having in front of the tv.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” Steve’s voice was just as quiet, like he was trying not to spook a scared horse, or comforting a kid with a cut knee, or like any of the other multiple scenarios Danny had been imagining him in for the last few months. “Did you want me to...”

Danny could feel his head shaking slowly from one side to the other as he watched the shoulder carrying Steve’s duffel slowly tilt towards the ground and drop the bag with a soft thump. No he didn’t want him to go, what a stupid question.

“I just, I didn’t know what to say if I called to say I was coming back and you were... y’know,” Steve shrugged his shoulders softly with his eyes on the floor and then brought them up to Danny’s face to meet his, “mad at me still.”

Danny could feel his head nodding slowly, probably looking like some prize idiot nodding and shaking and bobbing his head around without saying a thing. _Oh well_ , his crotchety inner monologue decided to pipe in, _let him suffer a minute_.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said it again, so unlike him to be this unsure of himself. “I should have done better. I should have known better Danny.”

The silence stretched little by little and Danny could see Steve beginning to squirm a little under his jacket. A small movement here or there with his hands, rocking back onto the heels of his feet. Danny turned towards the tv and put the beer bottle back where he’d retrieved it from on the coffee table.

“Did you find it?” He asked quietly, still turned with his back towards Steve. He thought he knew where this was going. Thought he understood what it was that Steve was saying and apologising for. “Did you find the peace you were looking for?”

He could hear Steve’s clearing his throat, his voice sounding thick, “Uh, it... I mean it turns out I knew where it was the whole time.”

Danny smiles, honest to god smiles at the empty beer bottle before clearing his expression and turning around. Steve is stood as still as a statue, hands by his sides, eyes a little moist, mouth set on his face like he’s going to be told to grab his duffel and shift out to the nearest hotel in the 2.5 seconds it takes Danny to open his mouth again.

“Better not let it go then,” he quips quickly, eyes on Steve’s now, watching his face.

It takes a second, where Steve ducks his head and wipes at his eyes, and then seems to finally remember how to move his own feet.

Despite all the miles he probably travelled, all the things he probably did searching, Danny knows it was him who did all the waiting, not Steve. And if he’s realised what he was missing and came here to let Danny know then Danny’s damned if he’s going to move out of this spot now.

Steve unceremoniously crashes into him when he clears his way around the couch, and for a second Danny thinks his back is going to very roughly meet the floor, before he registers that he’s pushed up against a line of hard muscle and can feel the heat from Steve’s hands clutched firmly against his back.

“Oh babe,” he draws his hands up and hugs Steve back, feels how taut his muscles are pulled and rubs his hands in circles until he feels them start to relax.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again into the hair just above Danny’s ear, and if he doesn’t sound completely wrecked and wretched then Danny doesn’t know what he sounds like.

“Oh babe,” it bears repeating, and Danny gives a final squeeze before he loosens his grip to lean back a little and look at Steve’s face. With complete sincerity but also that same touch of humor their relationship has always had, he rests a hand on the side of Steve’s face. “So you should be, you _total Neanderthal_.”

Steve’s eyes go a little wide, and then he lets out a surprised chuckle that only a tiny bit sounds like a sob. He clears his throat, smiles again properly this time and ducks his head back into Danny’s hair.

God, they’ve got a long way to go. They’ve done so much, and come so far. This right here is the result of so much time and so many experiences.

 _We’re so old_ , Danny thinks to himself. He can feel himself half smiling and half crying as Steve continues to press a bruising grip against his back and tries to slow his own breathing, shuddering with it against Danny as he holds him upright.

 _We’ve done so much_ , he thinks again. But there’s still so much more time in front of them. So much more time to do stupid, naive, reckless things that they’ll look back on and shake their heads at. Maybe he hasn’t quite signed himself off as an old man just yet, not when everything all of a sudden seems to be just beginning. He’s still definitely crotchety, but Steve always said he was hot-tempered.

Eventually they begin to relax. They unwind from each other and seperate just barley so they can sit and have half of a conversation they’ll eventually need to have properly. They settle further and eventually close their eyes and rest. They make promises. Vague plans are thrown around the air between them.

It isn’t fixed exactly, but it is enough for now. In the next few weeks if Steve apologises again, and Danny tells him he’s never been the smart one anyway and they begin to argue like they used to well, it’s always been a kind of peace for them anyway.

They’re a mess, jointly and individually, but it’s never mattered before and it doesn’t matter to Danny now. It’s peace, and Danny can live with that.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I have written in a good six years so I’m a little rusty, but it feels nice to be back to writing again and finally for this fandom. All comments welcome and encouraged <3
> 
> Unbeta’d so all mistakes are my own, please point any out that you see.
> 
> Thanks for reading x


End file.
